Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Better Than Windex!

Every family has their favorite industrial cure-all. Mine was WD40, the magical lubricant spray that seemed to perfume the family garage, permeating fabric, woods, metal, and human skin. But I didn't realize until today's article in The Guardian that the popular smelly can is also a key in the war on drugs:

Don't snort, spray

WD40 is not a chemical normally associated with combating illegal drug use. Defoliants over Colombia, maybe. But not WD40.

According to a report on the BBC Radio Five Live Breakfast show (wind the player through to 01:40 and listen), Avon and Somerset police are advising Bristol bar owners to spray the household cleaner and lubricant in their bathrooms to stop cocaine use.

The spray puts an "invisible film" over toilets and basins that absorbs the cocaine when any tries to snort it off them. It instead turns it into a congealed mess. The advice comes just a few days after BBC Wiltshire reported that a pub owner in Swindon was spraying it on toilet seats because anyone who then tried to snort cocaine off them got a nose bleed.

When telephoned, a spokeswoman for WD40 told Guardian Unlimited it did not recommend the use of the spray internally. But the company is otherwise keen to promote as a wide a use of its products as possible and the press release section of its website is a testament to ingenious PR. Even things that you never knew were problems – such as snow stuck to shovels or too-tight wheels on rolling ping pong tables – can be remedied with WD40, it claims.

It doesn't end there - most imaginative is the advice from "TV's Handy' Andy" on how the spray can pep up your love life. Before a night of romance unstick the dimmer switches, free-up the corkscrew and fix creaky bedsprings. Around the point I stopped reading it suggested WD40 can "ensure zips slide freely". Drugs and WD40, you can just about take it - but please, not sex.